Set Yourself on Fire
by Celestriakle
Summary: Reala tortures one soul too many and meets his end. Wizeman is not happy. AU.
1. The Spark

(Because I see maren as very magical creatures and Reala being able to manipulate magic very poorly, he gets one extraneous ability: He can disrupt the magic and energy of other creatures. It was a complicated series of events, however, that resulted in Reala acquiring omniscience. I will not bother explaining the identities of everyone listed at first; just know that all but Shirona are maren. Dot is a half maren, daughter of Jackle and Shirona, who has a collection of marionettes in the likenesses of every maren. She refers to them by their color. The dolls Reala has hidden away are essentially voodoo dolls.

Dot: celestriakle. deviantart .com/art/Dot-269777327

Read and review, please.)

Kicking up his legs onto the opposite armrest, Reala lounged back on his couch, folding his hands behind his head. With his belly full and to-do list empty, he could relax at last, and as his eyes slipped closed, he allowed the constant flow of information in his head to enter the forefront of his thoughts. His focus meandered through Nightmare, drifting from maren to maren; he saw it all: All of the parents caring for the newest generation of children, Alexiel playing with the stars, Linnea visiting her sister, Rosiel reaching past Sophia's toughened skin and making her blush, Azrael eating dinner, Mipsie loving on her minthers, Aeries still out on a mission, Ruu snoring uselessly, Layla cleaning up, Lana watching over her precious humans, Jackle and Shirona laughing at some shitty movie, and... Dot.

His expression tightened a moment; she had become an object of concern for him as of late. Recently, she had been seeking knowledge from Nightmare's libraries, information on dolls and life. His thoughts flickered briefly to his and NiGHTS's dolls, both of which were safely stored away where not a single speck of dust could disturb them. Although cute in their origins, the bonds they developed with their likenesses he did not want to see repeated. Unfortunately, the page of the book that laid open beside Dot as she sorted out her puppets described how to do just that. _"Better stop this before it starts," _he thought. Opening his eyes and kicking up onto his feet, he disappeared.

Reappearing outside Dot's door, Reala did not knock; he did not announce his presence: He threw open the door. Dot looked up with a squeak, the surprised expression on her face that of a child. "...Red?" she squeaked. Before this moment, he had never so much as acknowledged her presence, much less come to visit.

"My name is Reala," he retorted, entering the room and scooping up the book. "What are you doing with this?"

"I..." A smile, slightly eager, slightly scared, spread across her face as she looked down briefly at her puppets and touched them. "I wanted to make them more real. They..." Her face dropped a moment. "They don't make very good company right now."

"This isn't the way to do it," he answered, snapping the book shut. "Although..." He glanced at the book a few times. "You've read this a few times. You're excited about it. I'm sure you have some of it committed to memory. Removing this," he shook the book. "Might not change anything. You might not need it anymore." He warped the book away, into his home. "It might be best if I get rid of the precious objects involved." He grinned as her expression shifted to one of horror. She grabbed for her marionettes, but he was faster: In the time it took her to grasp four, he clutched them all, by strings or by bodies, and he tore the remaining ones from her grip.

She reached for them, for him, and cried, "No! Please, don't! I'll be good! I won't do it! I promise!" He just laughed, floating back just out of reach.

"I don't think I can trust you! You could do something infinitely worse. No, this is for the best." Grinning, he sped into her kitchen, tossed the wooden marionettes on the stove top, turned every burner to high, then spun round right quick to meet her before she could touch the stove. The air shivered upon their impact, and she reached, her fingers tantalizingly close.

"I won't! I promise! Please, Red, you can't do this!" Her shouts grew slightly coarse as she vainly reached past him, but he just laughed, backhanding her across the face hard enough to send her stumbling into the counter. She remained unphased: With a squeak of horror as the first of the puppets really began to catch flame, she rushed forward again, only to be intercepted by Reala's boot and thrown down to the ground. He landed atop her, kneeling and pinning her like a bug under a needle.

"Listen well, filthy halfbreed! My name's not Red; it's _Reala. _R-E-A-L-A. Not Red. Second of all, I _can _do this. Look," He glanced back at the stove before grinning back down at her. "I'm doing it right now. I can do anything I damn well please, and you can't do a damn thing to stop me. I'm sure you've noticed: Not even those precious plotholes your family so adores are any help to you now. Oh, and you can't do anything because _I _don't want you to."

The young halfmaren looked about ready to burst into tears, much to the General's pleasure. Suddenly, she shouted, struggling against him, "I hate you! You're a monster! Cruel! I hate you! Let me GO! _Please!_" She broke down beneath him, sobbing suddenly, and again, he laughed.

"Good, now that we've got that settled, let's watch the show, shall we?" Standing, he pulled her to her feet and, holding her arms to her sides, held her head in place so, try as she might, she would be unable to look away from the blaze.

The puppets burned, and she broke in his grasp. Her struggles became sporadic and halfhearted; her legs went limp beneath her, and she remained standing only through Reala's hold. Her tears made his rings slick on his fingers. The house filled with smoke; the fire alarm screamed incessantly; and they both—she more than he—coughed on the fumes, but he remained standing firmly there until every marionette was reduced to a pile of ash.

Half the kitchen had caught fire when he at last released her, and the blackened air ceased to shiver. Dot collapsed onto her knees and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. She couldn't even leave the room. Coughing, Reala laughed one more time before returning home. Down the street, a fire truck's siren shrieked.


	2. The Fire

(Reala's mate left intentionally unidentified. Fill in with your favorite Reala OTP. ;3

Read and review, please.)

Peace pressed upon Reala's house. Cold stars lit the still night. The General and his slept within, she snuggled up to he. With a slight sigh, he rolled onto his side, out of her arms, towards the edge of the bed; she whimpered slightly as she pulled her empty arms toward her. As Reala adjusted himself, getting comfy, reality ripped open beneath him; suddenly, he found himself torn from unconsciousness, falling, and something—the lethal knowledge rushed to him the moment he awoke: a syringe that Dot had filled to the brim with venom from an Inland Taipan—impaling the tender flesh of his inner elbow and emptying its contents into his veins. Shit, shit, shit! As the plothole spat them onto the dirt floor of Dot's secret underground room, he slapped the syringe from his arm, but it was too late: When the glass shattered, not so much as a drop of liquid splashed onto the ground.

Reala roared, and Dot flinched back, but not fast enough: His claws raked her face, and oh, how the red blood poured. Shrieking, her expression twisted with pain as she fell back—straight into another plothole, one to take her safely away. Reala growled fiercely; he would have her dead, oh yes, but she was not his greatest concern right now. Every second he wasted brought him closer and closer to death; he needed to move fast. It was only a matter of time before he started to feel the poison's effects.

At top speed, he tore up the stairs towards the door that led to the overworld—a maren lock prevented him from warping—and slammed into the heavy iron from which the door was crafted, yet as he crashed into the metal, the sound of impact rang much louder than it should have. His eyes widened, and his heart skipped a beat. For a flickering moment, he felt true fear. A door like this would have been tough for him to smash through in Nightmare, but here, in the human world, with his power weakened as it was? He thought himself only just capable. But not with a weight. Not with the enormous boulder that now rested upon the door.

"No!" he cried, not yet giving up, and smashed into the door again. And again. And again. With all his might, he threw his body against that door until he could feel a bruise blossoming across his upper arm and half his torso ached, but his need to escape far overshadowed such small pains. He charged the door again—but a spasm in his right arm, temporarily cutting off his flight magic, sent him careening not into the door, but the floor. He was panting now and, groaning as he pulled himself up, examined his arm. Up to his elbow he was fine, but beyond... His forearm and hand trembled, the muscles painfully contracted into a sort of paralysis; only spasmodically would his fingers obey him. "Dammit..." he muttered, struggling to turn his hand into a fist, then shouted, louder, "DAMMIT!" and slammed his working fist into the stone steps beside him. He could feel it now, truly feel it, through all the pain that was slowly spreading throughout his body: It reached from every shadow, circling him, drawing ever closer, his greatest ally and most despised tormentor... Death reached for his heart.

Halfheartedly now, his shoulder hit the door. The painful paralysis had spread to his right leg; he could no longer stand without support. He had lost control of his entire right arm; though he constantly sent it demands, its responses were becoming ever less frequent. He thought of his mate, still fast asleep—of course she still slept; he had to remind himself that only a handful of minutes had passed since he left her. She lay sprawled across the bed, curled over the place where he should have been. He thought of his Master, who was doing what little he could from Nightmare to salvage the lost General. Reala tried to move, tried to gauge how long he had left: Not long. The painful muscle contractions and paralysis they caused were spreading ever faster; he remained in control of precious few places, and even those were rapidly shrinking. He noticed a pain in his gut, like a searing knife: The poison was beginning to take his internal organs. Perhaps he wouldn't lose his entire body before he died after all, but such nonchalant thoughts were quickly drowned out by the sudden irregularity in his breathing. He gasped and choked; the poison had hit his lungs, and some small part of him, separate from the rest, began to panic. His body screamed for air, but the poison withheld it. Dying is painful, he realized, and thought longingly of his mate one last time before everything faded to black.


	3. The Ashes

(Jackle inherited wishes, small blobs, and the ability to grant them, from a maren long dead. Jackle named the various voices in his head after his cards. And yes, I do realize I can be a bit... twisted~

Elroy: celestriakle. deviantart .com/art/Elroy-273883364

Read and review, please and thank you.)

Jackle groaned as the wishes suddenly swarmed him, rousing them from his sleep. Sure, they were useful, good for fun pranks, but damn, could they be annoying. "Whaddya wannttt?" he groaned into his pillow, but upon hearing the anxious tinkling of their bell voices, looked up with a bit more seriousness. Like pians, the little blobs were simple, inherently happy creatures; the only time he had seen them upset was when he himself was... When his brother had died. The whisper of a low voice in his head snapped him away from reality, immediately ensnaring all of his attention.

"The girl," whispered the King. "You've lost her!" and the voice began to laugh, descending into a madness that would ordinarily make Jackle proud.

"No," he whispered. The wishes grew quiet, confused. Icy tendrils gripped the nightmaren's heart, and he shouted, tearing out of his bed and swinging into Shirona's, "No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, n—" He stopped cold, frozen, as his twisted mind attempted to process the scene before him. A dark blue blur solidified into a nightmaren, one Jackle had never met, who turned to gaze at him with deadened black eyes underscored by brilliant red markings. A golden loyalty mask encircled one of those chilled eyes. Looking past the strange maren, he noted a very familiar shade of red spreading along the sheets and marring that beautiful mess of golden hair he had grown so fond of. The human he had so dangerously allowed himself to love. A moment passed. Jackle threw himself at the bed, repeating again that incessant refrain, "No!" but something intercepted him. Fingers splayed, the other maren turned and pressed his fingertips to Jackle's face. Blue eyes meeting black, Jackle suddenly felt... nothing. All of his panic, all of his terror, all of his concern simply disappeared as the other maren drew his hand away, clutching a small white orb, no bigger than a large marble, enveloped in wisps of a pure white gas. Even the voices in his head grew silent.

"Gather your wishes, Jackle. Master Wizeman desires a counsel with you," instructed the maren. Without so much as another glance towards the body in the bed, he obeyed.

The two bowed briefly in the hand of their god, and as they rose, Jackle looked around. It had been a long time since he had visited, nearly thirty years by his estimation, but it looked the same as ever. There was only one change: A cage hung nearby, and inside, his daughter, Dot, gazed desperately at him through the bars. "Daddy, I'm scared..." she pleaded. At this point, something inside of him—he presumed it was Heart—told him he should be concerned, but no where in him could he find the will to so much as care, much less be concerned. His gaze slid back to Wizeman, who had spoken briefly to the maren apparently named Elroy and now intended to address him. "Your ill-raised daughter murdered my best nightmaren. The freedom you have so abused ends now, failure. You will suffer together." The Nightmaren King made a gesture to Elroy, who pressed that odd white orb back into Jackle. All of the caped nightmaren's lost emotions came flooding back to him; the voices in his head began screaming unintelligibly; and for a moment, he was filled with fear. A spark crackled below him, and that was the last thing he heard before a current ripped through his body and all he felt was pain.

He could feel it. Every wish as it died, his connection to them as it was severed, his gateway to plotspace as it closed permanently, even his ability to fly as it was stripped away. Fifty two razor sharp cards fluttered down from his body onto the hand below, and he collapsed, unconscious, among them.

Jackle awoke to the sound of his daughter's screams. It had been this way for days. At least he thought it was days. It could have been weeks; it could have been hours. Wizeman's chambers seemed exempt from the passage of time. Either way, the routine was the same: They would wake; Wizeman would find some new, twisted way to cause them pain until they passed out; and he would heal their wounds in their sleep until they woke again. From the isolation of a hand held far away, he watched as Dot thrashed around in her cage, tearing at her flesh with her own claws. He could only imagine what she was seeing. "Dot... please..." he called hoarsely, trying to reach her deaf ears. "Please stop..." Tearing his gaze away, he doubled over, trying to ignore her suffering, when the metallic scent of blood hit his senses, and he was reminded of the terrible burn in his throat and gaping hole in his stomach. Spade worked against him, reminding him of the delicious luxury of flesh in his jaws and claws, the sweet and salty flavor of hot blood running down his throat. "No," he whimpered, pressing his hands to his head. "I won't. Shut up. Be quiet." His voice grew frantic and stern. "I said quiet! Shut up! Shut up, shut up, _shut _uh—" He looked up as the scent of burning, cooking, flesh mingled with blood, and groaned as his stomach let out a ferocious growl. Dot's screams only grew louder as she tried to put out the fire that engulfed her.

This time, the steady fall of a liquid on his face brought Jackle into consciousness. Groaning quietly, he pushed himself up into a sitting position—he had been left on the ground this time, he noted—and looked up. He was almost under Dot's cage, he managed to perceive, before another drop of liquid hit him smack in the eye. "Ow..." he mumbled and touched his face, examining the substance left upon his gloves. Blood. His eyes widened in horror as hunger and thirst tore through him, knocking the wind out of him of their own accord, and he whined, clutching his stomach. That's when another drop splattered onto his horn. He looked up. "No, I..." His mouth was made of sand. "I..." Another drop spilled onto the floor before him. "I can't..." he protested weakly, but his knees did not obey. They pulled him under the stream of blood, and his head bent back, jaws open wide. When the first drop of blood hit his tongue, he could have moaned; he could have cried. He did both. It was exquisite, delicious. While he had been starved, she had been fed and he forced to watch. They had not been allowed to share then, but oh! Here was a way to share now. Greedily, he lapped up every drop that fell; he wiped his face clean and sucked it from the cloth in his glove. Oh, it was good, but it was not enough; he whined for more, and Wizeman was all too happy to oblige. Scooping his maren up in a hand, he lifted Jackle up to where Dot's hand stuck out of her cage.

Jackle wasted no time, roughly grabbing the thumb and ring finger of his unconscious daughter's hand and pulling it close. His tongue found its way into every crack and crevice of her hand, any place where so much as a molecule of blood could hide, and he moaned as he pressed his tongue to the cut on wrist, the origin of the bloodshed. Oh, it was good, but it was not enough: His teeth ached; his stomach roared. His thirst, though tempered, was far from quenched. Groaning in agony, he locked his gaze onto the peaceful expression of his still-sleeping daughter and reached up her arm, his claws touching, but not piercing, the higher parts of her arm. He couldn't. He needed to. But he couldn't. But he _needed _it.

The spell broke suddenly as Wizeman tore Jackle away from his daughter, squeezing just a bit too tightly. The dazed nightmaren coughed a bit and looked up at his father, but only briefly as he found himself, for the first time, allowed in—or thrown into, really—his daughter's cage. He blinked up at Wizeman, then down at Dot. His fangs began aching again, and over the demands of his stomach, Spade began to speak, to justify. He reminded Jackle of every time his daughter had disappointed him, every incident where she had failed. All those talks with Shirona about being certain they had made the right decision in having a child. All the reasons it was the wrong decision. All the times she needed him to clean up her mess. "This is just another of those times," Spade ruminated. Jackle's fingers began to twitch, and he yelped, quickly backing into the part of the cage as far from Dot as he could possibly get. Whimpering, he clutched his chest and began rocking himself back and forth.

Dot woke with a sigh and, feeling a twinge as she pulled in her hand, examined the cut on her wrist. No blood. Odd. She let the strangeness pass from her mind as she cast a fearful glace up at Wizeman; who knew what he had in store for today? Quickly, she looked around, trying to locate her father before the torture began, and snapped her head towards the sound of a giggle in the corner. He was grinning with open arms; maybe, just maybe, they were going to be allowed to go home! Finally! She let out a shout of glee as she threw herself into his arms, but that joyous feeling quickly dissipated when, like a trap, his arms snapped closed around her, and he whispered by her ear, "You shouldn't have done that." His grin spread ever wider as he added, "Run." and his arms opened. She fled, and he chased, jaws open wide.

At last, his stomach had been silenced. The deed was done. He lay contently in the empty cage, and not even a single bone remained to signify its previous inhabitant. He hummed to a tune only he could hear and gazed contently at a sight only he could see, and when Elroy came bursting in shouting about an attack, he paid no mind; however, after Elroy left, from far away, a voice called his name: "Jackle." His world was too wonderful; he didn't heed the call. "Jackle," the unmistakable voice of Wizeman repeated as the cage door was opened. This time he looked up and crawled to the edge of the exit. "Protect our land," came the command, and he was offered a deck of fifty two razor sharp cards. Jackle gazed at the deck for a minute, then grinned up at Wizeman.

"With pleasure, Master," he said as he picked up the deck, and feeling all of his power return to him, took off out of the chambers, maniacal laughter echoing behind him.


End file.
